What next, a Cabinet toothpaste squeezer?

All republican arguments are rubbish. But the most feeble is the one that attacks the Monarchy for its extravagance.

Our present Queen is modest and cautious in her use of special flights and trains.

It is her Ministers, many of them closet revolutionaries, who slurp hungrily at the trough of privilege.

If the Crown were abolished, these people would occupy its palaces and seize its perks with gusto.

I can easily imagine Vice-President John Prescott luxuriating in his official residence as a People's Footman squeezes his toothpaste on to the brush and Socialist ladies-in-waiting fuss over Pauline's hair.

Nobody loves this sort of thing more than socialists in power. The old Soviet elite lived lives of such luxury that they had to be hidden from their subjects by private forests, high fences and squadrons of armed guards.

African potentates come to power with the votes of the poor, then spend foreign aid on executive jets to carry them to summits about the evils of colonialism.

MPs and Ministers should be made to use public transport - to go by bus and train and to shuffle through the ridiculous 'security' procedures they have imposed on the rest of us.

Then they should be crammed into tourist-class plane seats next to very fat people. This way they would, at least, have some idea of what real life was like. As it is, they hide from the nasty world they have created.

But worse, they imagine that they deserve grandeur and seclusion on a scale that makes Prince Andrew look modest in his behaviour.

Using the wretched excuse of 'security', as if his precious person were ten thousand times more valuable than the lives of the common people, Princess Tony hops in and out of RAF planes, cleverly arranging dubious business abroad to justify what are often holiday trips.

It simply will not do to pretend that paying the price of a scheduled flight makes up for this abuse.

Travel of this kind in the outside world is beyond anyone but billionaires.

If they thought they could get away with it, they would force us, the taxpayers, to buy and equip special planes laid out for their comfort, such as the legendary Air Force One which Americans provide to fly their nonentity of a President around the world in a grandeur that ought to embarrass him.

But at least that luxury is reserved for the Head of State.

Under New Labour, even middle-ranking commissars can whistle up a Royal Flight when they have left it too late to buy a saver ticket on Eurostar.

They can even get it diverted to an airport handy for their constituency homes.

Ask them these questions, if you ever get the chance: Who do they think they are?

What have they done to deserve this? Would they do their jobs better or worse if they were made to live and travel like everyone else?

DAVE CAMERON seems to think that, without his saintly urging, conservative-minded people will behave in a selfish, environment-destroying fashion.

Those at his party's Manchester spring conference were apparently issued with instructions to pick up litter and travel by bus.

Well, my guess is that the 'Right-wing' part of the population - whom he seeks to drive away - are among the most socially responsible citizens in the country, contributing hugely to voluntary work and yes, picking up litter.

If they don't travel by bus any more it's because they are afraid to do so, thanks to liberal crime policies of the sort Dave supports. They don't want to be kicked to death in the bus shelter.

Old Man Mick and three generations of gullible perma-teens

Teachers complain that children are being turned into mini-adults far too early by advertisers and consumerism. If only they were right.

These poor tots are actually becoming mini-teenagers. The clothes they wear, seemingly designed by paedophiles, are not miniaturised adult wear, but scaled-down teen garb.

Outside the Armed Forces, there are now very few adults in our society. Life for most of us is a permanent adolescence, without true responsibility or maturity.

Women and men in their 40s and 50s dress and act as if they were still in their teens, and some use surgery to help the pretence. They carry on listening to the arrogant and self-pitying music they enjoyed in their pubescent years.

'Sir' Michael Jagger, in all his bony awfulness, is the embodiment of this major social problem.

This age group are the most gullible, easy-to-stampede consumers and the most slavish fashion victims. So commerce rejoices and seeks to recruit ever younger and older members to the ranks of the permanent teenagers.

You can now see babies in pushchairs wearing baseball caps.

FOLLOWING the success of The Da Vinci Code, I have an idea for the plot of another book.

A researcher in ancient archives stumbles across incontrovertible proof that a man called Jesus was put to death in Jerusalem, but three days later rose from his tomb and was observed by several reliable witnesses.

The thriller would be about the furious efforts of all kinds of powerful people to destroy the evidence, because they were so afraid of the consequences if this knowledge became general. Happy Easter.

Respect our flag - or end up saluting someone else's

Poor old Union Jack, celebrating 400 years in a country that is ashamed of itself and its flag. My guess is that most British people under 40 feel nothing much when they see it flying.

I have only ever waved the flag once in my life, from the back of a truck in the Somali wilderness, to fend off an American helicopter gunship that was taking an unwelcome interest in us.

I tend to think that the best place for a national flag is snapping from the jackstaff of a warship in a brisk sea breeze-Patriotic parades and that sort of thing seem un-British to me - the whole point of our patriotism is that it is quiet and does not show off.

But it is still a great shame that anti-British propaganda, in the schools and on the BBC, has persuaded so many people that an honourable flag, which has generally stood for liberty, chivalry and law, should now be despised.

Maybe we will wake up to the peril when - as will happen in the next 20 years - the flag has to be redesigned. Northern Ireland is one irreversible referendum away from leaving the UK and, when it does, St Patrick's Cross will have to go.

The harp will have to come out of the Royal Standard and arms, too.

This humiliating moment may jolt the complacent into realising that, if you don't respect your own flag, you will sooner or later be forced to salute someone else's.